Many of the points made in the article “Industrial R&D in Transition” are excellent, informative, and timely. In the section headed “Decentralizing research,” the authors expressed some skepticism about the effectiveness of joint research involving industry, academia, and the government. We believe such collaboration can be extremely effective. The Semiconductor Research Corp, of which the Micro Electronics Advanced Research Corp and the Nanoelectronics Research Corp are subsidiaries, is an industrial consortium that sponsors precompetitive and targeted university research on behalf of the semiconductor industry. Since its founding in 1982, the SRC has helped to enable the continuation of an exponential rate of growth in performance per unit cost (Moore’s law) for semiconductors and has provided support for more than 7500 graduates with advanced degrees in semiconductor technologies and related areas.
The SRC was gratified to receive the 2005 US National Medal of Technology for its contributions to the advancement of semiconductor technologies. Our experience has been that joint sponsorship of university research by industry and government agencies works well and can satisfy the missions of all three entities. Indeed, it is not difficult to find common ground between the research-program focus of our consortium and that of government research agencies.
